Nationals News: DJ Herz to undergo Tommy John Surgery

It has been headed in this direction for a while, but now we know that DJ Herz is going to have Tommy John Surgery

When DJ Herz went down with a UCL sprain in late March, the fear was that he would have to undergo Tommy John Surgery. Based on reports and his reaction, that seems to be where we are headed. Herz put out a tweet that heavily implied that he would go under the knife after a TalkNats report said the same thing.

DJ Herz was a breakout pick for a lot of people, including myself. He showed flashes of dominance in his 88.2 MLB innings last year, striking out 106 batters. It really seemed like he was going to build on that and become a big time starter for the Nats.

However, red flags started showing up in Spring Training. In his outing, his velocity was down and his control was all over the place. By the end of camp, it was clear that he had missed out on the Nats starting rotation.

After that, it became known that Herz was dealing with “dead arm”, which eventually became a UCL strain. It seemed inevitable that Herz would have to undergo Tommy John Surgery.

Herz is going to be out of action for at least a year and will have to build up from there. It is going to be a long and arduous process for the southpaw. He should be back sometime around the All-Star break of 2026 if things go to plan. However, as we have seen with guys like Cade Cavalli, this is a difficult injury to bounce back from.

Herz is a very exciting young arm and hopefully he can come back better than ever. We have seen plenty of pitchers come back looking as good as new after this surgery. Hopefully DJ is the next guy to do that.